


Blue

by orphan_account



Series: Fullmetal Fortnight 2014 [4]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Established Relationship, F/F, Paperwork, Post-Canon, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-10
Updated: 2014-03-10
Packaged: 2018-01-15 05:40:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1293394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Miles has a colour-coded system for organising paperwork, Riza Hawkeye attempts to and fails miserably at being cocky, and Olivier Mira Armstrong burns a mountain of toast.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blue

**Author's Note:**

> Written for FMA Week 2014. Prompt 2-B: "Colours". Also written for the prompt: "i need to see that paperwork filing thing re: miles & armstrong in action gc".
> 
> To the Hawkeye/Armstrong anon, this isn't for that under stress prompt you gave me, although it's partially inspired by that; I plan to handle that with a different, more actually "Armstrong is under stress and Hawkeye calms her down" sort of thing. This ended up turning into an introspective study on Armstrong and Hawkeye in a way. I now have a mighty need to write a fic about Hawkeye and Miles's friendship, because I can totally see them bonding over dealing with a couple of ambitious bastards like Mustang and Armstrong.
> 
> Unedited/unbeta'd/etc. Enjoy and thank you for reading.

Olivier Mira Armstrong has always organised her paperwork as meticulously as possible. Or rather, Lieutenant Colonel Miles has always organised her paperwork as meticulously as possible, per her orders, into sheaths of different colour that mark the various levels of urgency and importance, as well as separate them by category.

In turn Riza Hawkeye has learned to tell apart the various Tiers of Tears. In a strange sort of way, she’s found, she can use the paperwork as a fully functioning mood ring: The colour of the paperwork stack on which Armstrong is currently working tends to correlate _exactly_ with the general’s given state of mind.

There’s violet, reserved for low-level work of the kind that Armstrong usually passes on to a subordinate, of the kind that would cause Roy Mustang to opt to sneak to Records and take a surreptitious nap. There’s blue, which Armstrong _should_ glance over but doesn’t, and relates to easy acquisitions or stupid requests, such as some anonymous fuck who keeps asking that all of the utensils in the cafeteria be replaced with pink plastic. Green indicates battle reports, field reports, mission reports. Yellow symbolises more urgent requests at which Armstrong is required to look A.S.A.P. according to the marker emblazoning the folder in question. Orange contains orders from the higher-ups, while red stands for emergencies.

 _Emergencies_.

Such as the Promised Day, which would be encased in bright red and a combination lock, and would also probably be delivered by hand to her office by one very internally-panicking externally-apathetic Lieutenant Colonel Miles.

To some extent Riza Hawkeye wonders if something in the Briggs air exists that perpetuates the sort of person who carefully wraps zir emotions and hopes and fears in a prism of ice. And then, because ice is transparent, wraps it further and further, thicker and thicker, heavier and heavier, until the colours of their inner sentiments blurs into faintly reflected light diffusing across the translucent frozen surface.

The cold, perhaps. And it may well not signify a choice: Cold creeps by nature, settles into layers of skin and muscles and marrow to deposit crystals of frost into veins and coalesce the heart to another shard of the mountain peaks. Another seed, so to speak.

Hawkeye isn’t sure that Armstrong has fully melted, even now. But permafrost can melt with time and heat. And presently Hawkeye contains the heat, liquid heat, pooled in two of the most formidable items known to mankind: teacups capable of containing the unholy power of _tea_.

At the moment, Armstrong sits on her desk with her legs sprawled over the edge, a clipboard jammed into her abdomen. Knocking on the door with the heel of her boot, Hawkeye peers at the colour of Armstrong’s paperwork: blue.

The shade of her irises.

“Any more pink forks this time, sir?”

Armstrong snorts. “Haven’t you ever heard of closing the goddamn door?”

Hawkeye kicks the door shut—sufficiently softly so as not to break it, but sufficiently loudly for the close to cause an official-sounding _thud_ —and carefully slides the tray onto the desk. The tea ripples outwards. “Olive.”

“You checked? Well, if no one’s around.” Lowering the clipboard, Armstrong snags the teacup handle with two fingers. A droplet of steaming liquid stains her trouser leg. “Damn.”

Hawkeye observes the grip: The tendons in the back of Armstrong’s hand stand out against the skin in sharp, raised peaks of white; her fingertips have reddened from the pressure of holding a pen and clipboard for so long; and by the scarcely perceptible tremble of her left arm, the microfracture in Armstrong’s left wrist is acting up again.

Microfracture. Hawkeye recalls the story of a skirmish—told to her over several rounds of drinks by five or six starry-eyed men and women with shoulders broad from carrying the ruffed longcoats of Briggs—against the Drachmans during which one of the invading soldiers had managed to knock Armstrong from a rampart. Hawkeye could picture the Drachman’s surprise when Armstrong had climbed over the edge again, have scaled up the icy wall, to return the favour with only a microfracture in her wrist as a lasting reminder of the incident.

“How are you feeling? If the paperwork is too much for you, I could do some.” Hawkeye smirks. “I do enough for Mustang as is.”

“ _Mustang_ ,” Armstrong responds testily; Hawkeye _hrm_ s, because blue-level paperwork doesn’t usually frustrate the general to such an expert, “is a goddamn weakling who can’t even wipe his own ass without your help.”

Sitting down next to Armstrong on the desk, Hawkeye sighs. “Someday I’ll find a superior officer who actually _enjoys_ paperwork.”

“And what, you’ll leave me? Ah, I see; _that’s_ why you were never into Mustang the way that everyone else seems to think. He doesn’t share your papercut fetish.”

“It’s a _work_ fetish,” Hawkeye chides, “not a papercut fetish.” She allows her right hand to stray to Armstrong’s thigh and splays her fingers over the rough fabric. “Are you all right?”

“So, did Roy-boy finally curl up and die, or did one of those switchboard operators drag him for a make-out session in the break room?” Tipping her head back, Armstrong drains the teacup

Hawkeye presents a refill, the kettle warm in her palm. “Hm?”

Armstrong taps the pen against the clipboard with the impatient air that Hawkeye has come to associate with her lover’s more world-weary moments. “Why are you in my office?”

“It’s lunch break—” To her credit Armstrong elevates her eyebrows just enough to appear surprised. “—and a certain someone hadn’t come to the cafeteria.” Hawkeye strokes over Armstrong’s thigh, edging right; with her other hand she salutes. “In the spirit of my previous work with the Investigation Department, I was required to, well, _investigate_.”

“I see. In any case, I’m fine. Convinced that some of the higher-ups would benefit _highly_ from castration—in fact, you’re looking at someone who would be willing to do it for them _for free_ —but otherwise fine.”

Balling her right hand into a fist, Hawkeye suppresses a groan. On one hand she understands: When the apocalypse waits on the horizon and the blue of Amestris is giving way to bloody crimson, Armstrong’s mouth becomes a tactical war council and her arm becomes an extension of her sword.

Armstrong, the captain has learned, has a _very_ simple process for dealing with emotions. Step one: bottle all feelings. Step two: _molotov cocktail_.

Tears freeze in Briggs, after all.

But even the most potent firecrackers can leave ashen scars in palms, and so Armstrong evicts her frustrations, her pent-up anger, her _grief_ in faux fury at paperwork, at the idiots in charge of Amestris—with the change in Führership, the issues inherent in the incompetence of the senior staff have decreased, but still of the eleven on the council, there sit only two women, and pigeonholing and gridlocking continues to occur—at all of the miscellaneous minutiae that she can safely crush beneath her boot.

She reminds Hawkeye of Mustang. Mustang, who fakes incompetence and indolence at the simplest of tasks yet throws himself wholeheartedly into alchemy, into war tactics, into that which would make the mind of the average civilian ache but which sets his alight.

Armstrong, the Ice Queen, relieves her frustrations in fury wrought of fire, and Mustang, the Flame Alchemist, relieves his in sluggishness born of ice.

Hawkeye and Miles go out for drinks on occasion. Mostly to the Christmas bar, where Hawkeye jacks up free drinks due to the proprietor's intense fondness for the captain, to trade stories of the struggles and successes of lieutenanting—which has transformed into a verb, based off of their discussions—the two most likely candidates for the future Führer. And from his hints coupled with her own observations of the Ice Queen, Hawkeye has learned that, in times of rage, Armstrong has two excellent outlets.

The first, put crudely, is sex. Armstrong knows what she likes: Hawkeye _has_ on occasion locked doors and kneeled under the general’s desk and wondered how Armstrong managed to remain more or less dead silent while Hawkeye worked what the general has come to call _her magic_. Magic bullet. Magic bullseye. Magic trigger.

Which leads Hawkeye to the second option. Guns. Competition. Preferably both.

“Mm, Olive?”

Something snaps loudly; Hawkeye traces the arc of the broken pen cap from Armstrong’s fist to the floor, where it rolls forward to gently _tpp_ against the wall. Armstrong thins the line of her mouth. “What?”

Hawkeye crosses her arms. Dangerous territory, as far as the Ice Queen is concerned, but Hawkeye has gambled against homunculi and won. Then again Armstrong presents a _far_ more formidable challenge than any piddly immortal being ever could. “I haven’t seen you in the shooting galley in quite a while. Don’t tell me you’ve gone soft.”

“Hmf. I’m not sure what cowardly soggy cardboard box told you that. But I’ll have to ferret out a liar in the ranks.”

Crossing her legs, Hawkeye smiles pleasantly. Strokes up Armstrong’s thigh again, less to cause a reaction and more to remind the general of her presence. “That _liar_ you’d be ferreting out would be your girlfriend.”

Armstrong snorts, and a bubble of laughter follows a beat after. “Are you challenging me to a sniping contest?”

“I think that my very _existence_ challenges you to a sniping contest. The Hawk’s Eye versus the Ice Queen. Whoever loses has to make dinner tonight.” Hawkeye arches an eyebrow and tilts her frame slightly to the side, raising her chin in an emulation of the _you want to go?_ motion she’s seen so often on Rebecca Catalina or Edward Elric. After staring at her for a lengthy moment as though sizing up her challenger, Armstrong bursts out laughing. “What?”

“You’re overdoing it.” But the general sets down the clipboard with a decisive _fwp_. “Come on. Not everyone was made for pissing off the world just by existing.” Armstrong claps Hawkeye on the back, right between the shoulder blades, directly on the bruise formed a week or so ago when Hawkeye smacked the headboard sufficiently harshly to imprint Armstrong’s love in violet and green along the valley between her shoulder blades. “I’ll take you on that challenge regardless.”

“C’mon.” Hawkeye turns the clipboard over. Hides the blue of the paperwork in favour of the blue of Armstrong’s uniform, of Armstrong’s eyes (if red is the colour associated with lust, then it’s only natural that its opposite is associated with love). “For an extra challenge, we can break out those ancient blunderbusses and start praying they won’t explode in our faces.”

Armstrong follows, catches up, overtakes. Pauses in the doorway to glance back with her hand on the doorknob. “Riza?”

“Hm?”

For all of the colours of paperwork of which Hawkeye is aware, she’s _never_ seen red, and rarely has she encountered orange. Yet the smile on Armstrong’s beautiful mouth, soft and almost shy, is rarer still. “Thank you. For cheering me up.”

Hawkeye would bet a year’s salary that upon their return, a certain someone with red eyes and a soft spot for Armstrong’s lover will have polished off the remaining paperwork, forged signatures and all. Which would leave the rest of the evening open.

As Sergeant Major Fuery will later report to a General Mustang laughing and glowing with pride, the outcome surprises no one. Winner: the Hawk’s Eye. Loser: _still_ the Hawk’s Eye, because burnt toast sandwiches isn’t the most appetising dinner possible.

(But they’re _Olive’s_ burnt toast sandwiches. To Hawkeye, delicious by default.)


End file.
